MOVEMENTS OF GRAYLING. 25 



The juxtaposition of these extracts shows how 

 many inaccuracies and fallacies are diffused by those 

 who profess to be the teachers of truth. 



The quotations to the right are accurate in detail, 

 as grayling fishers of experience will concede. The 

 annual movements of these fish occur in much the 

 same way as those of the trout, with the exception of 

 the one being in condition in the cold season and the 

 other in the most genial part of the year. In the 

 spawning season (April and May) they repair to the 

 broad shallows, where the water-course widens, and the 

 gravelly bottom is plainly apparent. Here they lie 

 in shoals, and, before the national law prohibited the 

 practice, sacrilegious work was often perpetrated with 

 the net by the poaching fraternity, who, unfortunately, 

 are much better acquainted with the habits of their 

 quarry than is generally credited. After the sexual 

 functions have been in due course accomplished, they 

 seek the best feeding positions vacant, near the sides 

 and at the tails of sharp streams, where they lie at 

 the bottom, ever on the look out for what the stream 

 may bring down, such as the larvae of the several 

 orders of large water flies and other aquatic insects 

 the water-spider and freshwater shrimps (Gammarus 

 aquaticus). The grayling, though a delicately orga- 

 nized fish, nevertheless possesses a strong stomach, 

 superior to that of the trout, which enables it to 

 digest insects inhabiting shell-like cases, and other 

 molluscous food. After their health has been some- 

 what restored by a short location here, the approach 

 of the hot months drives them to the seclusion of the 



